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Monday, March 10, 2014

America tells of meeting bin Laden

Sahim Alwan was trained at an al-Qaeda camp in Afhganistan in the lead-up to the 9/11 attacks

The Lackawanna, New York-native quit the terrorist group when he realized he might be used as a suicide bomber

Alwan testified as a witness this week in the trial of Suliam Abu Ghaith - Osama bin Laden's son-in-law

Ghaith is accused of recruiting members for al-Qaeda

An American who
trained at an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan in the spring of 2001 before
losing his nerve testified Thursday how he encountered Osama bin Laden
and the terror group's spokesman at a safe house — and that bin Laden
hinted that a suicide attack on U.S. soil was in the works.

'Just
know you have brothers willing to carry their souls in their hands,'
bin Laden told the witness, Sahim Alwan, and other recruits, Alwan said
on the witness stand in federal court in Manhattan.Asked what he thought that meant, Alwan responded, 'To die.'

His testimony came at the trial of bin
Laden's son-in-law, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, who's accused of plotting to
kill Americans by being a motivational speaker at al-Qaida training
camps before the September 11 attacks and as a spokesman for the terror
group afterward when it sought to recruit more militants to its cause.

Alwan,
41, was among a half-dozen men who became known as the Lackawanna Six
after their arrests on charges of providing material support to
terrorists by attending bin Laden's al-Farooq camp in Afghanistan in
2001. He pleaded guilty in 2003 and served about seven years behind
bars.

Testifying under
subpoena, Alwan told jurors that he became an aspiring jihadist after
worshipping at a mosque in Lackawanna , New York, where he grew up. In
April of 2001, he traveled to Pakistan and crossed the border to
Afghanistan, where he was directed to the safe house to wait for an
assignment to a training camp.

While staying there, bin Laden showed
up in a truck with an entourage of AK-47-toting men with masks on their
faces, Alwan said. He testified that he recognized bin Laden as the
FBI's 'most wanted guy.'

He
also testified that Abu Ghaith showed up at the house days later and
explained an Islamic oath, or 'bayat.' He said the defendant told the
men that if they swore allegiance to bin Laden, they were also expected
to back the Taliban.The
recruits were shown a video depicting the 2000 suicide bombing of the
USS Cole in Aden harbor in Yemen that killed 17 American sailors, Alwan
said. Prosecutors say the video was narrated by Abu Ghaith, and portions
of it were shown to jurors Thursday.

After
seeing the video and understanding who was behind the USS Cole attack
and the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa in August 1998 that
killed 224 people, including a dozen Americans, he said, 'I knew I was in over my head.'Once
at the camp, where bin Laden visited the trainees one day, Alwan
informed his trainers that he wanted to go home. He said he even faked
an ankle injury, hoping to be sent to Kandahar.

But
he was told that he needed to meet face-to-face with bin Laden first
and that the al-Qaida leader knew he was from the United States even
though he and the others had been warned not to disclose that fact.He
testified that Bin Laden quizzed him about America, asking, 'How are
Muslims there? ... How are the youth there? What do they think of the
operations?' By operations, Alwan said, he assumed bin Laden meant
suicide missions.'I just said, "Oh we don't think about it,"' he testified.